Dancing With The Stars Season 24, Week 9 – Dancing by the Numbers!

Let’s all cheer for being at the finale of what has been an extremely annoying season of DWTS. Almost enough to make one vow to not watch anymore. And if not for the blogging, I wouldn’t be watching the show any more. But someone has to point out all the BS and I guess that’s our job.

Note that I’m traveling on both Monday and Tuesday so I’m not entirely sure that I will have the time to do a final DBTN that I usually do between Monday night and Tuesday night. Hopefully I will be able to – we’ll see.

Now, on to this past week. What happened? I don’t remember. :::yawn::: The only thing I really remember is the judges acting all shocked when Simone was eliminated. Give me a BREAK! If you were really surprised by Simone being eliminated, you don’t deserve to be a judge on this show that’s been around for 24 seasons now. I can’t believe….refuse to believe…that the judges think they can nitpick someone to death for 9 weeks and that it doesn’t have an impact. They certainly have egos, and believe that they direct the audience – so why would they believe that their constant assault on Simone’s dancing had no direct influence on the voting? The girl is an OLYMPIC gymnast and probably has had the toughest judging and criticism throughout her young life that one can imagine – yet she was brought to tears by these erratic, often mean-spirited, judges. 

The only question now is Rashad – they did much the same to him over the past 9 weeks, only with a few more glimmers of positivity. Although never a 10 from Len, as I recall. But will he go out in third place because of their constant negativity? Prior to the assholery of the judges, I was pretty certain he would win. That was about the time that the judges started kissing Normani’s ass and manipulating the show heavily in her (Val’s) favor.  We’ve seen the negative behavior work in the elimination of Simone. Will the positive behavior work in Normani’s favor??  Well, as it stands right now, I think she better hope that there really are nutbars voting 25,000 times each.

She’s in second place and David is within spitting distance of her and Rashad both. David needs more than 20k to get past either of them…but that’s what he needed to get past Simone. Just sayin’.

Now, no one is getting eliminated on Monday night and there are three dances left to be added into these numbers before a winner is selected.  If someone were going to be eliminated on Monday night, I would be thinking it could be Normani going home. But I suspect that they will overload her on points, be less generous with Rashad and put David in the toilet.

But really, there are several ways this could go – if they score Rashad and Normani such that they come out close to tied (only 1 or 2 points difference), that means they think both have a shot at winning. If they score David HIGH, look out for an upset. If they noticeably underscore Rashad relative to Normani, Normani is likely going to win. It all depends on how much info you believe the judges get before the show. I’m inclined to believe that Len, at least, knows what’s going down.  I guess we’ll see.

Let’s play “let’s pretend” for a minute. Assume they give Normani two perfect scores on Monday and Rashad lower scores. David gets very low scores.

So, Rashad would be down two points in my scenario. David would be down a whopping 19 points from Normani – nearly impossible, IMO, to crawl out of third place. I expect them to go for that unless he’s seriously killing it in the votes.  But with four dances in the mix when it’s time for people to vote, what does that mean for the votes needed?

Yeah, David would need a literal shit ton of votes to get out of third place – not impossible, but nearly so I would say. But more importantly, look at the difference between Rashad and Normani. That’s chump change. Now, many of you will say, “Yeah, that’s what we thought about last season and this season is no different. Val’s partner is getting pimped.” Yes, that’s true, BUT this is a different season and the context is now different.  I contend that it’s very possible for Rashad to win in spite of the producers agenda for the following reasons:

  • Val now has two MBTs to Emma’s zero and that matters to some people. Will they give him two in a row?? Derek is the ONLY pro to win 2 back to back this late in a DWTS career. All other back to back winners had it happen very early in their tenure on the show….and then they never won again.
  • Laurie Hernandez was fresh off the Olympics and was the big name going up against a race car driver. Rashad and Normani are more even in this area. Before you yell “Simone!” keep in mind that Laurie was pimped, and the opposite was true for Simone. Not only that, but some of the audience may have gymnast fatigue.
  • Neither Val nor Normani are going on the DWTS tour, seemingly removing the need for the producers to engineer their win.

All that said, here are the reasons why Normani might just win:

  • People are sheeple…and the judges have been critical of Rashad while kissing Normani’s ass – as unwarranted as both activities have been people tend to believe even the most ridiculous shit after a while (see: Trump).
  • It’s very possible that both Rashad and David as so well liked that they could be splitting the majority of the votes, leaving room for Normani to win.
  • People who were voting for Rashad may start to think he has no chance to win and don’t vote in the finale. Possibly because they see the manipulation and believe the show is completely rigged instead of just manipulated. I had dinner and margaritas tonight with some friends and they are in this boat. They’re convinced that Normani is going to win even though they don’t like her or Val and prefer Rashad. There was no convincing them that if they just VOTED for Rashad that it’s possible for him to win.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why manipulation works and they don’t have to mess with the actual voting.  Unfortunately, I don’t see Emma being the type to relentlessly remind us that she hasn’t won a MBT.  Nor is Lindsay, IMO. Val, on the other hand, will come up with (and relentlessly hog the mic to share) a dozen reasons why Normani should win.

Don’t buy the manipulation. And if you don’t want Normani to win, Rashad is your guy. He deserves the win every bit as much and a vote for David is a vote for Normani.